Dart has a powerful need to write, but little to write about, so he turns to the weather. It’s getting much, much warmer and the water’s not the beautiful shade of blue that he’s seen in other parts of the Pacific.
Yesterday he saw a large group of porpoises leaping and playing in the path of the ship. They seem quite energetic for the heat and created a big disturbance in the water. I’ll pause here with a couple of observations. First, Dart refers to these critters as “fish.” That strikes me as odd for a man who prides himself on accurate language. Any second-grader these days could tell you that a porpoise is a mammal, but Dart wasn’t aware of that. Also, he described how they leaped out of the water, arched their bodies and fell, effortlessly back into the waves, as though Dot had never seen such a thing. I thought about that for a moment and decided that the strangeness of these creatures to Dart must be a sign of the times. Most of us know all about dolphins, porpoises, whales and sharks from the time we are children. I credit television for that. Students in the 1940s didn’t have TV, nor did they watch educational films in the classroom. Also, I think that, in general, the human world wasn’t as tuned in to the animal kingdom as we are now. Something as common and recognizable as a porpoise now would have seemed an exotic creature, indeed, in 1945, especially to a boy from Ohio.
Then Dart writes another interesting observation. “Something I noticed during our brief stay in port a few days ago is that men who’ve seen action and who’ve seen near-miracles performed talk about them as every-day occurrences, not like the sensational reactions they have when they first see or experience them. That is, if they talk about them at all. Maybe the reason is that they see so much of these things that their minds become somewhat dulled to the significance of each one, and sometimes even to the whole war. We don’t recognize news when it happens right around us. Everything is of news value, but very, very little of it has been published yet. Some of the details of our first carrier raid on Tokyo, way back in February, are just being release. Some of the things we’ve seen, or been near, or been through since that time are being published now, too.”
“We saw them, heard them, heard of them, even passed remarks about them. But until Life or Time, or The Saturday Evening Post print those stories, or until the newspapers tell them, we don’t realize their worth. People will be astounded by this war for years, as security regulations are lifted and dark secrets are illuminated.”
He’s heard of guys and girls getting matching suits to show the world they’re a couple, but he’s never heard of Cynthia’s idea to cut her hair like her boyfriend’s. Dart vows he’ll never ask Dot to show her love in that manner. (Good thing, becaue Dot would never do it!)
He doesn’t know how she does it, but twice in recent weeks, Dot has dreamed things that were true. The first was when she dreamed of him wearing his favorite sport coat and slacks from his civilian days, even though she’d never seen him in that outfit. Then she dreamed on July 12 that he was on his way home. He’d love to know how she pulls that off.
He tells her to keep her chin up because their reunion isn’t far away now.
Dot writes no more letters in the month of July, and Dart sat out the 25th. But he’ll return with another on July 26th. See you then.
